Consumer Guide (49)

Pushing '75 and I keep hearing the same thing I was hearing in '70:
Music, at least pop music, is boring. Ho hum. I'm bored with hearing
that meaningless criticism; given the choice, I'd rather listen to my
records. I know former rock fans, as all of us used to call ourselves,
who now subsist on jazz or country or classical or even pre-'69 rock,
but for me the flow of nourishing pop seems to continue. Perhaps it's
only nourishing in bulk; since it's my profession to be glutted I
can't prove the contrary. But I know that when I listen to records for
pleasure, I tend to concentrate among those one year old or less. And
I insist that there are records out there for those ears so inclined.

Admittedly, finding them isn't as easy as it used to be. The
congruence between mass popularity and aesthetic worth has become
almost random, and the number of good records that pass virtually
unheard is more shocking than ever. Some generalizations that seem to
be valid at least for this batch of 20 is that the most interesting
records--even the failures and rip-offs worthy of attention--tend to
come from performers who mix black and white directly and
consciously. Whether it's Randy Newman singing about crackers in a
honky drawl or Esther Phillips going down on a Chris Smither tune, the
secret is to celebrate American music in all its miscegnated glory.

The Consumer Guide, of course, is designed to aid you the listener in
separating the listenable from the (potentially) boring. No imputation
of ultimate worth should ever be attached to any device as arbitrary
as a letter grade. Of course not. Those are just there to help you buy
and ignore. A and A minus records are highly recommended, most often
because they provide an unduplicated pleasure. A B plus album can be
expected to offer less accessible or consistent rewards. B is where
competence begins: extreme discretion should begin there as well. And
now.

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL (Epic) Reportedly, this band has
stopped trying to straddle West Virginia (original home of the band
and their variation on Western Swing) and Berkeley (where each found
fellowship). Now comes the straight country push. The losses, in
sprightliness and fantasy, aren't fatal, but do inspire the obvious
question: Why not just listen to Bob Wills? B
[Later]

AVERAGE WHITE BAND (Atlantic) Scottish Soul,
Contemporary Division. The passionate expertness of this harmony
group's sound does not quite compensate for the banality of its
songs. (Admittedly, that may be my problem, but it's also a problem of
the form itself.) Yet in the end, the passion almost
suffices. B
[Later: A-]

GOOD RATS: Tasty (Warner Bros.) What can you say about a
band admirers claim is the best to emerge from Long Island
since the Vanilla Fudge? That even Shadow Morton isn't so foolish?
C MINUS
[Later]

HERBIE HANCOCK: Thrust (Columbia) Switched-on Herbie
jazzes it up one more time for all the Con Edison
fans. C PLUS

LABELLE: Nightbirds (Epic) Not all pretentious records
are even difficult and many fewer are worth the trouble; this is
both. I've always found Labelle's histrionics unforgivable, especially
when applied to the asininities of Cat Stevens, Bernie Taupin, et al.,
but this time Allen Toussaint's groove carries the melodrama, and
what's more, the lyrics often justify it--when you get around to
paying attention. Unusual talent and ambition finally finds its proper
concept. A MINUS
[Later]

JOHN LENNON: Walls and Bridges (Apple) There's no
question that this doesn't make it, but figuring out why--on a level
more complex than the songs aren't very good, which they aren't--isn't
easy. It has to do with disorientation and lost conviction, as if the
only reason we believed in Lennon's singing was that he did. What can
it be like for this ex-Beatle to trade harmonies with Elton John (who
sings backup on "Surprise, Surprise," just as Lennon does on Elton's
new single) in the inescapable knowledge that it's Elton who's
doing him the favor? C
[Later: B-]

TAJ MAHAL: Mo' Roots (Columbia) In which Taj branches
into reggae, a natural extension of his lazy, sun-warmed blues. As
attractive as ever, but that always bothersome something missing, that
failed semblance of purposefulness, is more missing than ever.
B
[Later: B+]

FRANKIE MILLER'S HIGHLIFE (Chrysalis) Scottish Soul,
Historical Division. Miller attempts to do for Otis Redding what Joe
Cocker did for Ray Charles, and I mean "for," not "to." Allen
Toussaint helps, a lot, but Miller's own songs show growing power.
B PLUS
[Later]

TRACY NELSON (Atlantic) Even at her peak, Nelson risked
sluggishness: you wondered whether that was placidity or metabolic
malfunction. Now her voice has thickened, its seriousness become
leaden. It takes her a minute longer to finish "Down So Low" than it
did six years ago. Literally tedious: "tiresome because of slowness,
continuance, or prolixity." C MINUS

RANDY NEWMAN: Good Old Boys (Reprise) Despite my immense
misapprehensions--Newman's political sensitivity, a useful attribute
in one conceptualizing about the South, has never impressed me--I'm
convinced that this is Newman's second-best album. (The competition is
12 Songs; this lacks the doleful, cockeyed inspiration of
apparently uncoverable flights of fatalism like "Lucinda" and "Uncle
Bob's Midnight Blues.") It also rights a career that was threatening
to wind down into cheap sarcasm. Contrary to published report, the
white Southerners Newman sings about/from are untainted with
contempt. Even Newman's psychotic and exhibitionist and moron show
dignity and imagination, and the rednecks of the album's most
notorious songs are imbued by the smart-ass Los Angeles Jew who
created them with ironic distance, a smart-ass's kindest cut of
all. There is, natcherly, a darker irony: no matter how smart they are
about how dumb they are, they still can't think of anything better to
do than keep the niggers down. A
[Later]

ESTHER PHILLIPS: Performance (Kudu) Those who worry
about the black audience for blues should study the Phillips
variation, a jazz-pop blues which carries Dinah Washington's torch
into the present and beyond. Phillips's adventurous taste in material
sometimes gets her into trouble, but here she almost gets away with
Eugene McDaniels's "Disposable Society," and eight-minutes-plus of
Chris Smither's "I Feel the Same" seems just about right.
A MINUS
[Later: B+]

RICHARD PRYOR: That Nigger's Crazy (Partee) Whether a
white Voice writer has the right to enjoy a black comic mocking
the desperate inadequacies of black junkies, chickenshits, and comedy
fans ("You can't land here, nigger--this is Mr. Kramer's property") is
a troublesome question. Meanwhile, I bust my gut. There hasn't been a
stand up comedian funnier since you-know-who, and Pryor is funnier, if
less solid. A

BONNIE RAITT: Streetlights (Warner Bros.) Best cut:
Allen Toussaint's "What Is Success," about the "so necessary"
spiritual expenditures entered above a record company's bottom
line. Whereupon Raitt pays her tribute to schlock four times
over. Typically, she can uncover a stirring moment in the most
stillborn possible-single, but the limits of her integrity have
already been defined by three flexible, often playful, yet obviously
uncompromising albums, and when the strings and woodwinds rise up,
they dispossess her. Even "What Is Success" suffers a setback when
Raitt accedes to Toussaint's impersonal "he." That's no "he,"
Bonnie--that's you. B

DOUG SAHM: Groover's Paradise (Warner Bros.) I always
thought Sahm was too repetitious and derivative for a great rock and
roller, but maybe now I understand his genius--this record, his most
unambitious in many years, is the one I'll play whenever I feel like
hearing Sir Doug's Tex-Mex. No coincidence that Stu Cook and Doug
Clifford, the rhythm section that supposedly held Creedence in thrall,
have found a master even simpler than John Fogerty. A MINUS
[Later: B+]

JOHN SEBASTIAN: The Tarzana Kid (Reprise) It's nice to
know California John isn't doing this for money. He's so warm he never
has to sing for his supper--he can always get work as a chafing
dish. C MINUS

JOHNNIE TAYLOR: Super Taylor (Stax) On Taylor's previous
lp, the best cuts were undistinguished, squashing all the really
undistinguished stuff into the sludge. On this one, "It's September"
(a you're-due-home lyric finished off with a sharp question mark of a
guitar riff) and "I've Been Born Again" (testifying so ebulliently for
monogamy that it's credible) are inspired enough to brighten the
competent-to-better material that follows. B
[Later]

TOM WAITS: The Heart of a Saturday Night (Asylum) There
might be as many coverable songs here as there were on his first album
if mournful melodies didn't merge into neo imagery in the spindrift
dirge of the honky-tonk beatnik night. Dig? B MINUS
[Later: C+]

STEVIE WONDER: Fulfillingness' First Finale (Tamla)
Stevie's survival and subsequent consensus have been deeper and more
satisfying than his last two albums. Catch up with Talking
Book--or Signed, Sealed and Delivered.
B PLUS
[Later: A-]

ROY WOOD'S WIZZARD: Introducing Eddy and the Falcons (United
Artists) Wood always seemed to have something on the ball besides
English, but this collection of iron pyrite oldies is the most
pointless British import since the bowler. C MINUS
[Later: B-]

Additional Consumer News

Since it's my rule to exclude reissued material from the Consumer
Guide, I haven't written about what may be my favorite record of the
year--Duke Ellington's Flaming Youth, 1927-28 recordings in the
RCA Victor Vintage Series, which first a Betty Boop cartoon and then
Steely Dan's version of "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" turned me
to. There's no quick description of this music--the Steely Dan
version, sweet as it is, doesn't even suggest the suppleness, mystery,
and humor of the original. But I can say that the sound quality is
superb--Ellington, I am told, wrote for the studio when he was going
to record--and that anyone who loves American music should make
Flaming Youth his or her next purchase. When I learn more, I'll
pass it on. . . .

In CG (48) I suggested that a lot of
posthumous Coltrane was rip-off, attributing this to unnamed
experts. Both experts, Gary Giddins and Peter Occhiogrosso, differ
violently. Much of Coltrane's best work, they say, was unreleased
before his death. Occhiogrosso does believe that some of the
posthumous stuff might never have been release had its creator lived;
Giddins is very happy to have it all (except for most of Atlantic's
Coltrane Legacy); I apologize. . . .

The nicest thing I've had to say about Paul McCartney in years is that
the Yankees used to play "Band on the Run" before every game. Any
better suggestions for next year? . . .

The Copacabana is alive and well in Brooklyn. For openers, Tony
Orlando and Dawn.